Using your hotels YouTube channel more effectively

With video content such a powerful medium for brands when it comes to digital marketing, it seems a shame that more hotels aren’t utilising it to their full potential. In this article we’ll look at ways in which a hotel can make better use of its YouTube channel.

YouTube provides a great platform for hotels to showcase their video content. Your channel is like your hotels page, similar to the way Facebook and other social platforms work. On your channel you can provide information about your hotel, contact information and so on. You can also list and organise videos you’ve created, as well as videos you like, channels you like, and so on. Subscribers to your channel are also displayed here publicly.

The best way to utilise your channel is by growing your subscriber count. The only way to do this effectively is by producing top quality, shareable, and enjoyable video content. And the only way this can be done (without filming cats doing stupid things) is by creating a video marketing strategy.

Video marketing strategies for hotels

The video marketing strategy should start with your hotels objectives; what are they trying to achieve? Is it to grow YouTube subscribers (which ultimately shouldn’t be the main goal, but would be a side-benefit of hitting your main goal) or is it simply to gain a specific numbers of likes, or video views (10,000 in a 2 month period for example?). If this was a video strategy for Facebook then it could be based on shares, but for now we’re focusing on YouTube. Perhaps it could be as simple as showcasing your hotels new refurbishment to as many people as possible.

Once you’ve decided on a goal you can then look at ways in which you can achieve this. You should work with a content-creator or video marketer (if you don’t want to do this internally) and find an angle for the video. This will be the hardest aspect of the task – planning and filming the content. Thankfully with mobile phones technology its now very simple to produce high-definition, quality video without having to hire some out. Sometimes the home-made / more amateur content can have a greater appeal when it comes to social sharing and suchlike.

Getting yourselves noticed on YouTube

Finding your audience and broadening the reach of your video is crucial to any successful video marketing campaign. You should start by following brands that are relevant to you, or which you have real-life relations with already (nearby restaurants, and any other big local attractions). Chances are they you will need to rely on them to share your content to help your campaign go viral, so it’s always good to build up a good sized following initially.
You can also try appealing to those users with big followings already, if they’re relevant to your target market. These people may help your content to go viral, so treat them carefully.

Once you’ve done what you can to build your own following on YouTube (which can also involve including links to your channel throughout your website and any other social platforms) you may want to look at investing in a paid video marketing campaign. This is a simple way to get your video in front of millions of users, and could be done based on a users geographic location (perfect for advertising to a specific area) or could be based on demographics (age, gender, interests) or can be contextual, so based on other relevant videos. This can be a really targeted and cheap way to get your video out there – perfect for those wanting instant results.

As you can see there are many ways in which a hotel can make itself heard on the YouTube social network. Start by planning a simple video marketing strategy, and then take things from there. Posting videos and using the network as you’d use others would be a good place to start, and then you can take things from there to see what you’d want to achieve from what is a very powerful, popular and trendy social network.